Why Slam Islam?

Stunned by that pipsqueak Gainesville preacher’s nitwit notion of burning Korans and terrified by the escalating global reactions, I ordered a highly recommended book for perspective, Reza Aslan’s “Beyond Fundamentalism” (Random House, 2010). It erased a lot of my culpable ignorance of Christian/Islamic history, but its analysis of the contemporary standoff was not at all reassuring.

The most astonishing information was about how widely the American military was employing more and more a crazed version of Christian fundamentalism as a battle strategy. General level officers talking openly about End Time Christianity and what that allegedly implied about defending Israel at all costs.

I had missed Ronald Reagan’s contending that Catholic Liberation Theology in Central America was a “threat to U.S. national security.” (p.142.) Our military tactics in the Middle East involves soldiers passing out Bibles in Arabic. Fundamentalist Air Force Academy professors and chaplains are using their positions to evangelize their students. Comic books about Christian hell given to Islamic youth.

Easy to understand why Jihadists were upset by our tactics: "Indeed, the United State’s conduct in both Iraq and Afghanistan—the evangelizing soldiers, the humiliation of Muslim prisoners forced under torture to eat pork and curse Muhammad, the Crusader rhetoric of the military officers and political leaders—has not only validated the Jihadist argument that these wars are “a new Crusader campaign for the Islamic world” conducted by “the devil’s Army.” It has provided Jihadists with the opportunity to successfully present themselves as the last line of defense against the forces that seek to “annihilate Islam”.”(p.100.)

As I am reading this book, our media reveal the horror stories of American soldiers killing Afghans for kicks and cutting off fingers as souvenirs. We hear a lot of inflated rhetoric about our brave soldiers, but nothing about the lowest dregs of our volunteer forces, the least educated losers in our unemployment debacle, sworn in as soldiers in a desperate last minute effort to fulfill quotas. We saw them before in Abu Graeb. Hyper Christian officers and some American soldiers a shameful disgrace to any religion.

It is equally disconcerting to learn for the first time about the First Crusades: In the Conference in Clermont, Pope Urban II in 1095, spelled out the protocols: Forgiveness of sins for those who fight the Church’s enemies. "I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ’s heralds. . . to destroy that vile race/the Muslims/ from the lands of our friends.” (p.65.) "All who die, by the way, whether by land or sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested.”

Sounds like Osama bin Laden! Not our Pope!

A version of this piece is also published by Broad Street Review.